Outlining Soal: Finding that Another’s Darkness May Not Be Mine

When a ghost slips Soal a shard of the ancient Soul Stone, the key to restoring her enslaved people to their homeland, Soal feels she has found her missing heart. But as her sister’s memories bind her mind, she discovers that she will not only have to fight the Svetskyn to set her people free. She will have to face her own sister.

There are some story ideas that you know are alive. Even just a simple concept can create the spark that will keep an author burning bright even through the long moths of drafting. that is how this book, Soal, has felt to me. It began with the simple concept of two sisters, where one is unconsciously drawing on the energy of the other, and then opened up into the depths of conflicting races, empathetic magic, and the pain and strength that come through such strong empathy.

What do we do when we feel drained, almost replaced by the feelings of those around us? How do we un-enmesh ourselves from their desires, loathings, and assertions when we have forgotten we could have our own? How do we find ourselves in reality, instead of in simple rejection of the ones we have been lost in for too long?

This is the journey of Soal, as she learns that the memory that has trapped her for years is actually not her own. And that finding her own soul might free her entire race.